By Barrymore Laurence Scherer

Singing was probably the earliest form of music making. Pace the sticks, stones, and other natural oddments that prehistoric mankind could have pounded together to create rhythm, singing was the only musical activity that issued from within the human body. And surely, before the arrival of the first antediluvian soloist, ensemble singing must have arisen from mankind's inherent urge to sit together before a fire and heighten the budding sense of security and kinship by joining their rough-hewn voices in some form of communal song.

The legacy of ensemble singing courses like a silver stream through history, from the songs of Homer's Argonauts to doo-wop harmonists with Brylcreemed pompadours. During the 20th century, Germany, England, and America have produced some exceptionally gifted vocal ensembles, but in recent years few have matched the widespread acclaim accorded the San Francisco-based male ensemble, Chanticleer. Composed of "twelve good men and true," Musical America's Ensemble of the Year--now in its 30th-anniversary season--is arguably the most prominent independent full-time classical vocal ensemble in the United States.

Chanticleer certainly wasn't the first choral group to come on the American scene. Nineteenth-century America enjoyed a genuine choral tradition, and amateur choral societies, church choirs, and university glee clubs abounded. Their voracious demand for sacred and secular choral music was met not only by Mendelssohn, Brahms, Gounod, and other Europeans, but by American composers like John Knowles Paine, Dudley Buck, and Henry Hadley.

Unfortunately, this amateur choral tradition petered out after World War II. A few professional choral groups like the Roger Wagner Chorale and the Robert Shaw Chorale survived, providing a tonal ideal for American church and university choirs at the time.

Meanwhile, Chanticleer began as something of an auditory dream in the mind of its founder, the late Louis Botto (1951-1997). As a choral tenor himself, Botto was struck that much of the medieval and Renaissance vocal music he was studying was not being performed. Therefore, guided by the example of all-male choirs of Renaissance churches, he decided to form his own all-male ensemble to revive this neglected repertory. He began with nine members, selected from the choirs in which he sang, including friends in the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and the Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys. While preparing and rehearsing for their debut performance, Botto realized that the ensemble lacked a name. A baritone in the group, Charlie Erikson, reading Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales at the time, suggested Chanticleer, the name of the "clear singing" rooster in The Nun's Priest's Tale. And on June 27, 1978, Chanticleer bowed before a full house at San Francisco's historic Old Mission Dolores, performing works by Josquin, Byrd, and other old masters.

Grueling eight- and ten-week tours characterized Chanticleer's early years, the group traveling by van from concert to concert, often singing a dozen programs in asmany towns in as many days. Having gradually achieved national recognition, Chanticleer made its mark on the international scene with its performance at the International Josquin Symposium in Belgium in 1984. It was a last minute invitation (another group had to cancel), and with no time to learn the assigned Josquin Mass before departing for Europe, they were obliged to rehearse it during the flight! Today, Chanticleer regularly concertizes in such worldwide centers as Paris, Taipei, Tokyo, London, and Vienna; international festival appearances have included Verbier (Switzerland), Salzburg (Austria), Schleswig-Holstein (Germany), and the Festival Van Vlaanderen (Belgium).

Since its founding, more than 75 men have sung in the ensemble, which fluctuated between eight and 12 singers during the years. One who has made a defining impact on the group is Joseph Jennings, who joined as a countertenor in 1983. Quickly recognizing his manifold gifts, the members soon asked himto become Chanticleer'smusic director. Since then his distinctive singing style and innovative arrangements of gospel music and pop songs have helped define Chanticleer's unique sound. In addition, his love of teaching young singers has forged the development of Singing in the Schools, the ensemble's vital educational outreach program.

Asked why he feels audiences love choral music, Jennings responds that, "I don't know whether it's the combination of words andmusic. There's something about the human voice that's elemental. We all have one. There's a thought that everybody can sing--though there's also the thought that not everybody should sing. Something happens when the vibrations of one voice and another link up. They radiate and reach the core of other human beings. Even as a listener it causes you to vibrate sympathetically. Certainly there are vibrations when instruments play together, or when an organ swells over you. You can feel it, physically. But when voices come at you, it's a totally different experience.

"Acoustically a male choir differs from a mixed choir. It is comparable to a string section or a brass section. All the instruments are alike and therefore they lock in together with a greater fundamental closeness, we sing as though we are a single instrument. In Chanticleer, we're voiced from top to bottom of the compass, there are voices that overlap, and apart from the bottom bass, everybody sings more than one voice part--sometimes baritones sing tenor, sometimes tenor sings alto. It depends upon the piece. Sometimes if the countertenor is written on top, we'll have the tenor sing the line so that he can 'gut it out.' "

Having started their own Chanticleer record label in 1982, they greatly expanded their presence on CD by signing an exclusive contract in 1994 with Teldec (nowWarner) Classics, a label willing to release repertory as diverse as Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, spirituals and gospel music, and symphonic pops. "Colors of Love," Chanticleer's 1999 release devoted to contemporary choral works, won the Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance (With or Without a Conductor). And "Magnificat," a disc devoted to Renaissance and Baroque music written for the Virgin Mary, rose to the top five on Billboard's ClassicalMusic chart. In 2003 they won another Grammy Award for their recording of Sir John Tavener's Lamentations and Praises, which they had commissioned fromhim. Indeed, commissions have been an important facet of Chanticleer's activities, and since 1983 the group has commissioned over 60 works from over 40 composers, including Zhou Long, Augusta Read Thomas, Steven Stucky, John Musto, Tanya León, Jake Heggie, and Mark Adamo.

In 2007, inspired by the 15th- and 16th-century tradition of parody masses, in which each movement is based on the same plainsong chant but written by a different composer, Jennings and Chanticleer took commissioning in a slightly different direction with And on Earth, Peace: A Chanticleer Mass. The work features movements by an invited group of five contemporary composers chosen from among those he and the 12 Chanticleer singers most admire. Jennings deliberately sought composers of divergent cultural and musical backgrounds: New York-born Douglas Cuomo, Turkish-American Kamran Ince, Israeli-American Shulamit Ran, Londoner Ivan Moody, and Dubliner Michael McGlynn. "I wanted this to be a Mass about today's world," Jennings explains. "And I wanted it to acknowledge that people express their faith in different ways."

Call it openness, broad-mindedness, or just plain musical adventurousness, Chanticleer's versatility and flexibility have contributed to making them a true icon of male ensemble singing in America, and a model of creative musical thinking throughout the world. 

Barrymore Laurence Scherer is a classical music critic for The Wall Street Journal. The American edition of his new book, A History of American Classical Music (Sourcebooks) was published in October.